History is littered with examples of valuable tools that were too complicated, cumbersome, and expensive to adopt… until, suddenly, they weren’t. Whether it was the computer revolution of the 1980s, the internet revolution in the ‘90s, or the mobile revolution of the ‘00s. Over the last 30 years I've seen how democratizing technology has transformed our world and how we do business, and I’ve been part of the communities of developers who come together through open collaboration to fuel these transformations.

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At Intrinsic, we’re aiming to accelerate a new generation of robotics developers. We want to make programming intelligent robotic solutions as simple as standing up a website or mobile application. To realize this vision, we’re welcoming Brian Gerkey, former CEO and co-founder of the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), and his team to Intrinsic by acquiring the business of its commercial subsidiary, the Open Source Robotics Corporation (OSRC).

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For years, we’ve admired Brian and his team’s relentless passion, skill, and dedication making the Robot Operating System (ROS) an essential platform for robotics developers worldwide (including us here at Intrinsic). We’re looking forward to supporting Brian and members of the OSRC team as they continue to push the boundaries of open-source development and what’s possible for the community.

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OSRC and its team are separate from OSRF, a community-focused nonprofit foundation, which will continue to steward development of the open-source tools and libraries. Open-source tools like ROS, Gazebo, and Open-RMF will remain open, free, and managed by OSRF under the Open Robotics brand.

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In July 2021, Intrinsic graduated from X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory, to become an independent company at Alphabet. Our mission is to democratize access to robotics. We believe that the long-term support for developers of the global ROS community is key to this mission. Our team is eager to welcome and work with our new colleagues, expand our use and integration of ROS tools, and build the Intrinsic platform. As we work together to support and serve developers, we see immense value in creating a software platform that expands access to intelligent robotics in a way that’s compatible, useful, and open, while creating countless opportunities where they didn’t exist before.

We’re thrilled for Brian and members of the OSRC team to come on board. And we’re looking forward to working together to make it much easier for developers to envision, then deliver, real-world impact through robotics applications. We see a world in which companies, both big and small, no matter their industries, can easily leverage robots as familiar tools. This will require a vast and committed developer ecosystem, and we’re excited to be building and supporting that community.